


Nightmare II

by naboru



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst, Dark, Fluff, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, Slice of Life, implied gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5941882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naboru/pseuds/naboru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blast Off has a bad night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare II

**Author's Note:**

> **Continuity:** G1, pre-war (Dysfunction AU)  
>  **Disclaimer:** Sadly, I own nothing.  
>  **Beta:** ultharkitty

Blast Off woke up. Everything ached, but more than that his neck stung. The pain there was most present and almost drowned everything else.

He heaved air and his vents sputtered energon.

Optics snapping online; he stared at a sterile white wall, tiny drops of energon the only thing to disrupt the non-colour. He glanced down.

Blast Off lay with his side in a puddle of energon.

Somehow, this situation seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

It took some effort, but eventually Blast Off got to his feet. He stood, unstable, leaning a hand on the white wall while his equilibrium chip reset.

His frame was covered in energon, but he wasn’t sure if it was his own. He wasn’t leaking, so where it came from Blast Off didn’t know. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out.

Looking around carefully, he didn’t see anything but the pink liquid at his feet, and a disgusting cold hallway. The bright, diffuse light didn’t seem to have a source.

Blast Off inhaled deeply. How the pit had he got here?

He didn’t remember anything specific. His trip in space, another exploration mission to confirm the readings of one of Cybertron’s space telescopes. The space portal had thrown him out close to his destination – as much as you could call it a destination when exploring. At least he hadn’t got lost in space again.

Blast Off turned, but there was only the white hallway in both directions. With a sigh, he started moving. There had to be a way out.

The corridor was long. Blast Off walked for breems as frustration built, replacing the edge of the uncomfortable emotion that could be fear. It took as long again before he finally reached an intersection. But again it led only to empty white corridors.

He turned left just as not to move forward again.

There were no doors, no visible lamps, and no other living beings.

Even his scanners came up blank. No radiation or heat source. Shouldn’t light at least have a wave or heat signature? The illumination here didn’t. The light didn’t have any origin; it made Blast Off queasy.

When he arrived at another intersection, Blast Off’s frustration turned to wariness. If he hadn't possessed an internal chronometer, he wouldn’t even have been able to guess how long he'd been on his feet.

His tanks were empty and his neck still hurt.

Rubbing his face, Blast Off decided to go right this time.

Again he followed the empty hallway, his mind wandering just like his feet as he tried to remember anything that had happened before he’d woken up.

His memory had no files on this.

Another intersection with another choice of merely white hallways, and Blast Off didn’t care which way he went.

He began to get tired, but he moved on. Step after step, one foot in front of the other. The stench of half-processed energon on his frame was still present, but less prominent. He had got used to it.

Once he reached another T-junction, Blast Off sat down for a moment. This was leading nowhere, literally, and he was low on energon.

“Frag,” he muttered, and heard an echo of it. His optics blinked, and he was up within astroseconds to glance around the corner.

There was a dark frame ahead of him - a dark head, black back and purple arm – it was like looking in a mirror. Blast Off stepped out, optics widened. He gasped; it was loud in the corridor.

The frame half turned, but a blade shot out of the wall, beheading the mech.

What the? “Frag?” he muttered.

Behind him, Blast Off heard someone gasp, a familiar voice. He went to turn.

The world went dark.

* * *

Blast Off was in pain when he woke up. His neck ached badly, and the sensation drowned out most of the other aches in his frame.

He vented air deeply, and sputtered energon. His optics snapped online, and the sterile wall was the first thing he saw, only tiny drops of energon made it look less than clean.

He frowned. This all seemed oddly familiar, even the puddle of energon he lay in. If he only could remember…

* * *

Vortex tilted his head. This was interesting.

Blast Off seemed deep in recharge, but his field flared wildly. He could almost set a clock to it, until the confusion and exhaustion in the signature spiked to a few astroseconds of dread and shock, only to drop back to confusion.

Even the purple visor dimmed a little when the shock set in, and the strong hands tensed, fingers clenching into the soft covering of the berth.

It was the fourth cycle of it after it had woken Vortex up. He didn’t know how long it had gone on before that, but he couldn’t imagine that it had been restful.

He shook Blast Off’s frame again; no result. Sighing, Vortex shuffled slightly next to the shuttle. He had long since learnt that Blast Off slept soundly, and that was an understatement. 

“Oh, c’mon. Your field’s kinda annoying,” Vortex muttered, and poked Blast Off’s side. He kept poking, but his finger moved from the side to the shuttle’s front and then up to the alt-mode vents.

Getting to his knees, the poking became a slow stroking, up the shuttle’s chest and collar plating where Vortex’ fingers dug in slightly. It was nice to touch the shuttle like this, without being told off or having his hands pinned down. Not that Vortex disliked getting pinned the way Blast Off did it to him, but it made touching the thick, strong plating almost impossible…

He flared his energy field to meet Blast Off’s, trying to take away some of the stress Blast Off so obviously felt in his sensor echo. The field’s signature didn’t change, and Vortex wasn’t sure it helped, but he moved his hand further up anyway, along the thick neck cables that were proportioned to the other’s frame. Energon pulsed in them, and charge that was energy and information both.

Frag, the shuttle was hot.

Blast Off’s optics came on as his engine whined. He gasped, staring at Vortex in utter shock before shoving Vortex away. Although shoving might have been the wrong word considering Vortex landed at the foot of the berth. There he watched Blast Off rolling over, his upper body leaning out as he threw up.

The shuttle’s vents heaved air loudly, and the room filled with the smell of half processed energon. Vortex grimaced. The sound of energon hitting the ground and pumps working backwards wasn’t pleasant either – not when it was Blast Off.

After it stopped, Blast Off rolled back on, and curled himself up, slinging his arms around his torso. He muttered something, but aside from “frag” Vortex couldn’t understand it.

“Uh, are you okay?” he asked after a while, but Blast Off didn’t reply.

The shuttle uncurled himself instead, and shifted, leaning against the wall, his legs bent. He shook his head.

“Bad sensor echo, eh?” Vortex dared to edge closer.

“No.” Blast Off’s voice was hoarse. “Bad memory…”

“Uh-hu?”

The door opened, and Blast Off small drone came in. Apparently the shuttle had pinged it to clean the mess he’d made.

He looked awful; his visor dim, his hands shaking. One clutched at his neck, the other at his thigh, and Vortex knew from the sound that Blast Off tried to keep his ventilation even. He didn’t quite succeed.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Blast Off shook his head.

“Okay… but, well, maybe it'd help?” Vortex couldn’t deny that he was nosy. He hadn’t seen Blast Off like that before. Perhaps it was about something that had happened to him in space? 

“No…” The shuttle didn’t sound annoyed, just worn out, and so Vortex pushed again.

“Well, if you don’t want to talk about it, you could show me?” He wanted to know what made Blast Off lose his composure.

Blast Off tensed, and it looked like it was an effort for him to reply. “I don’t want to.”

Vortex shrugged, his rotors moving more than necessary, but Blast Off didn’t look at them. “I can leave you alone?”

The tension in Blast Off’s frame increased even further, even though Vortex had thought that wasn’t possible.

“You don’t have to.” Blast Off sounded odd, almost pleading, and this in return made Vortex even more curious, but it was also more than a little creepy.

“Okay… but let’s move to the sofa. We could watch Tank Bot?”

Finally, Blast Off looked at him. Vortex half expected to be told off, or for Blast Off to say how stupid the show was. He didn’t expect to hear what he did.

“Sure, sounds good.”

The drone beeped. Blast Off turned his head swiftly. It only left the room after it was done.

“Blast Off?” Vortex frowned.

Not answering, the shuttle got to his feet. He was unstable, looking around suspiciously while still rubbing his neck. “Let’s… just watch that thing you said.” Blast Off was trembling.

Vortex resisted commenting. Instead, he shuffled off the berth and came up beside the other. “Tank Bot. And we should have high grade, too.”

This earnt him a frown. Thankfully, a usual Blast Off-reaction. “It’s too early for high grade.”

Vortex grinned, walking behind the other into the living room, but didn’t get on the couch like Blast Off. “It’s never too early. Besides, you look like you need it.”

Blast Off huffed.

Later, after their comments on Tank Bot’s cheesiness died down, Blast Off didn’t complain when Vortex pressed close to him. Their fields mingled in a non-erotic way as they sipped their high grade. In return, Vortex didn’t complain about Blast Off slipping back into recharge. The shuttle’s part of the energy field was calm now. And while he was still curious what had made Blast Off freak out like that, he was quite comfortable without the eerie sensation in the field.

Vortex draped himself over Blast Off, and initiated his own recharge cycle.


End file.
